


baby it's cold outside

by professortennant



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, Stuck in a blizzard, hypothermia made them do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: On a road trip to Boston, Brad and Claire are stuck in a blizzard and are forced to pull over and wait the storm out.Or: Claire develops a slight case of hypothermia and Brad is just trying to keep her warm.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 11
Kudos: 94





	baby it's cold outside

**Author's Note:**

> tbh im just ready to write holiday fics so we'll consider this a jumping off point (and also bc every fandom needs a 'we had to cuddle for warmth' fic)

The calculations she does in her head add up over and over again: revenue from increased magazine subscriptions, revenue from ads and YouTube videos, and revenue from the newly launched merchandise. 

It all means she has no idea why Adam couldn’t have shelled out a few hundred bucks for her and Brad to fly to Boston instead of forcing them to carpool the few hours in the middle of winter with a blizzard in the forecast. 

It’s moments like these that she thinks he’s earned his reputation as the big bad boss. 

“Oh, no, Claire, we can’t be drivin’ in this. Jesus Christ, it’s like a freakin’ whiteout out there.”

She watches him lean forward in the driver’s seat, beanie pulled down low over his ears with a few unruly curls escaping beneath the cap, squinting through the windshield completely covered in snow and flurries. 

“I think I saw a sign for a rest stop ahead,” she mentions, shivering slightly and pulling her jacket tighter around her. The truck’s heater is on and blowing warm air on them both, but the bitter cold from the rapidly strengthening storm is seeping in, chilling her. “Maybe we can stop up there for a bit and let it blow over?”

He snaps his fingers, pointing at her. “Now we’re usin’ our noodles. Alright, quick pit stop and then back on the road. But if we stop and get snowed in, you’re helpin’ me dig the truck out.”

She hides her grin into the collar of her jacket, hums a noncommittal agreement, and fantasizes about balling up a perfect snowball and pelting Brad with it. She closes her eyes and stifles a yawn. It’s late afternoon but the storm has hidden the sun from the world, the cab of the truck is warm, music plays softly and wraps its notes around them both, and everything smells and feels like _Brad._ Everything about being here with him screams comfort.

Despite the snowy, icy circumstances, she’s not worried about getting to the rest stop and Boston safely; she trusts him implicitly to get her from Point A to Point B safely. He’s captain safety in the kitchen, constantly harping on her about safety glasses and storing zip ties in her purse (“What? Brad, I don’t even _have_ a car!” “Don’t matter, Half-Sour! Always be prepared!”).

In the five minutes she closes her eyes and just slips into the soft edges of sleep, she feels the truck come to a rumbling, stalling stop. She sighs, shifts in her seat, and turns toward him, rests her cheek on the seat and fights back a shiver. The wind outside rattles the car and she looks at him, alarmed.

“Okay, okay, good news: Wind ain’t nothin’ to worry about. This bad boy—“ He taps the steering wheel fondly, “Can handle anything.”

She raises an eyebrow. “And the bad news?”

He winces, doesn’t meet her eyes. “Okay, don’t be mad, but, well, see. I wasn’t expecting to pull over and then I had to drive slower because of the snow and then, well, the heater uses up gas too and—“

She senses it coming before he says it, but it doesn’t make her internally scream and externally groan any less. 

He says the words, “We’re runnin’ low on gas and we’re gonna need to kill the engine for a few hours. The ole Google says storm’ll be over by then. We’ll hit the road and be in Boston in no time.”

She bites back the _I told you so_ on the tip of her tongue, refraining from reminding him she told him to pull over and get gas twenty miles back. From the sheepish look on Brad’s face, she doesn’t need to say it anyway. He already knows. 

Brad kills the engine, tucks the keys into the glove compartment, and grins at her, clapping and rubbing his hands together. “You wanna play I Spy?”

She loves Brad, but she really, really hates Adam Rapoport right now.

_______________________

Between Missouri’s harsh Midwest winters, Boston’s tendency to ice over every December, and Canada’s attempts at turning her into a hermit with its freezing temperatures, Claire is no stranger to being cold. 

But Missouri, Boston, and Canada seem a lifetime away and an hour into their gas conversation efforts, the cold is seeping into her bones. Her laughter as a result of Brad’s stories of New Jersey winters past is almost enough to warm her up. 

Almost. 

“You sure you’re okay? You don’t look so good, Half-Sour.”

She waves him off, bundles her jacket around her shoulders tighter. “I’m _fine,_ Brad. Really.”

Except the wind howls around the cab of the truck, rattling and shaking the vehicle. Tremors overtake her and she bounces her leg, tries to generate warmth in any way she can. She flexes her hands in her pocket and closes her eyes as if she could block out the cold if she just stopped looking at the piled up snow on the windshield. 

But closing her eyes doesn’t stop the fact that they’ve been sitting here for an hour with no heater and her lips are turning blue.

“Christ, c’mere before you turn into a Claire-sicle.”

The front of the truck is a bench seat and Brad makes quick work of the arm rest between them, pushing it up and clearing the space beside him. He reaches for her, tugs lightly on the sleeve of her jacket. 

Claire goes without much protest—a sign she is desperate for warmth, too cold to be embarrassed or hesitant about pressing against the solid warmth of Brad Leone. The arm he slides around her shoulders is heavy and warm and she sighs, presses her cheek against his chest and nuzzles a little warm her cheek against his soft flannel shirt.

Brad’s big hands rubbed up and down her arm, trying to generate warmth. But it’s like now that her coldness has been acknowledged, everything feels more intense. Now that her body remembers what it’s like to be warm, the cold feels that much more pervasive. 

“Cold,” she chatters, pressing impossibly closer to him, seeking warmth. Her cold nose brushes the crook of his neck and he sucks in a breath. 

“Geez, Claire. Got a Rudolph nose over there.”

“Rudolph’s nose is red, not cold.”

“Hey,” he counters. “Maybe his nose is red because he’s cold. Plus, you ain’t seein’ your nose right now. Red as hell.”

“Shut up.”

“Don’t know I’d be sassin’ the human heater you’re cuddlin’ right now.”

Her cheeks flush at the use of _cuddle_ , but she can’t deny that’s _exactly_ what they’re doing. It feels nice—both because she’s now finally warm and because it’s Brad. She’s not sure if she and Chris Morocco were stuck in a cold truck she would be so eager and willing to share body heat. 

“Think about something warm, Claire. Steamy hot matzah ball soup and sunshine in New York and grilling on the beach.”

“You hate grilling on the beach,” she reminds him. “Sand.”

“So you were listening!”

“Kinda hard not to. You’re loud.” She sighs and slips a hand between his back and his jacket, sighing in relief at the rush of warmth tingling in her palm and spreading up her arm and to her heart. “And warm,” she adds happily. “Loud and warm.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, tilts his head down to catch her eye. “You gettin’ fresh with me, Saffitz.”

“Doesn't count if it’s for survival,” she says without thinking. Heat floods her cheek for entirely different reasons. Beneath her, Brad stills and then shakes with laughter.

These are the kinds of situations she keeps finding herself in with Brad: her foot in her mouth and both of them hovering at the edge of the boundary drawn between them, terrified of misstepping. 

But Brad, like he always does, carefully maneuvers them back away from the line until they’re ready to both cross that line hand-in-hand. He shifts beside her, their thighs pressing together, his arm tight around her. 

“Okay, so what else are the rules of survival? Educate me, Claire.”

“Brad, literally the only hypothermia rule I know is from some documentary on Netflix and it said—“

She stops herself mid-thought, going still in his arms. Brad frowns, pokes her shoulder. 

“Hey, don’t go holdin’ out on me, Saffitz. What’s the rule? I don’t wanna die out here.”

“We’re not going to die,” she reminds him with a roll of her eyes. “You said the storm would be done soon, right? And then we can crank the heater and get going.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he agrees. “But I want to know about the survival rule you don’t want to tell me. Is it a sex thing?,” he teases. “Because I ain’t strippin’ down in this weather, even for you, Cl-“

“We can’t have sex,” she blurts out. 

Brad goes very still, the hand on her shoulder ceasing its circular warming motions, looking down at her with a bemused expression. "I mean—I’m flattered, Claire. But this wasn’t exactly the venue I was envisioning—“

“No,” she interrupts him, horrified that now she’s started down this path, she can’t seem to stop. “I mean, that’s the survival rule. People think—well, romance novels and Hallmark movies, I guess—that if you’re hypothermic you may be tempted to have sex to warm up or, or something. But it dilates your veins and blood vessels and you feel hot at first but then you end up _losing_ heat. It was—it was actually pretty interesting,” she finishes lamely, completely mortified, andwondering if it would be too obvious if she disentangled herself from him and scooted to the other side of the truck.

“Okay,” Brad laughs. “No sex. Consider it off the table.”

She glances up at him, bottom lip between her teeth, considering him. “Was it—was it _on_ the table?”

He looks down at her, eyes dropping to her mouth. In the confined space of the truck cab, wth Claire pressed against him, their heads tilted towards each other, their world suddenly feels boiled down to the short distance between their mouths. 

“I don’t know, Claire. Is it?”

“Brad,” she whispers, fingers curling into his jacket and flannel. “We can’t—“

“Because we’ll die of hypothermia or because you don’t want to? Cause I was thinkin’ maybe something was happenin’ here, between you and me, but if I got it wrong, you just gotta tell me.”

She shakes her head, struggling to find the words to explain that he absolutely didn’t get it wrong, that _something_ has been growing between them for a while now. But the cold is seeping into her veins and her head feels cloudy and all she wants right now, is to just _stop_ overthinking and to let Brad warm her.

“Not wrong,” she breathes out. “Not wrong at all.”

“Thank god,” he says, ducking his head to slot his mouth over hers, his hands tightening on her arm and curling her inwards against him.

It’s one of the more frantic, desperate first kisses she’s ever had. Brad can’t seem to focus on where he wants to touch and kiss her first, so he tries to touch her all over at once. His hand spreads wide over her back and side, his other hand cupping and cradling her cheek as he kisses her with enthusiasm, tongue flicking at the seam of her lips and dipping into her mouth, stroking over the roof of her mouth in a way that makes her gasp into the kiss and cling to him.

“Brad,” she murmurs between kisses, trying to twist closer to him. His breath is hot on her neck as he ducks his head to lick a stripe up her neck, teeth grazing the tendons straining there. 

She clings to him, wraps her arms around his neck and shoulders, fingers creeping beneath the band of his hat to stroke and tug at the soft, riotous curls trying to escape. At her touch, he seems to break and slow down, everything turning tender and slow. 

He buries his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in, rubbing gentle circles against the small of her back. She clings to him, twists and presses soft, barely-there kisses to his temple and cheek, nails scratching through his hair comfortingly. 

(In another life, she feels brazen and daring, climbs into his lab and wriggles against him, deliberately and slowly rocking down against him where he’s hard and straining in his jeans, reveling in his wild eyes and the tight grip on her hips, daring him to lay her out on the cab bench and find a way to fuck her. 

There’s a life out there in which she grins like the cat that got the cream when he groans, tries to not lift his hips against her and press up into where she’s hot and needy for him between her legs.“Claire,” he’d groan. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” she’d say breathlessly, hands slipping beneath his hoodie and shirt to get at his skin, cold be damned. 

“Okay,” he’d say in the next breath, already reaching for her to get his mouth on hers, one hand in her hair and one hand on her ass. 

But that’s not them, not their life. This is too momentous, too overwhelming.)

Instead, he pulls away and smiles softly at her, eyes crinkling at the corners. His hand cups her cheek, thumb sweeping gently over the curve of her cheek and her kiss-swollen bottom lip. 

“We should probably slow down before we’re tempted to break those survival rules of yours,” he teases.

She cringes, eyes closing and turning into his hand, trying to hide her embarrassment. “I can’t believe I said that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I mean,” he counters with a cocky grin, leaning forward to brush his nose against hers before kissing her softly. “I have an idea what you were thinkin’. I was just too irresistible.”

Claire hits his chest, cheeks burning, before tucking herself more firmly against him. “Shut up,” she murmurs, turning and pressing a soft kiss to his chest through his flannel. He grins, kisses the top of her head.

“Too bad,” Brad says thoughtfully. “I’ve always wanted to have one of those, like, _Titanic_ moments. You know? The one scene where they’re gettin’ all hot and heavy in the car and then you just see her hand slide down the window? Right?”

She frowns at him. “Brad, they both die at the end.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, but they have a real good time before then.”

She laughs, lifts her face to his for a soft kiss that he gives easily. Everything about him—the laughter he brings, his lips on hers, his jacket partially wrapped around her, _him—_ everything screams warmth and invitation. 

Claire settles in against him for the last hour of their storm, all games of I Spy long out the window as they hold each other and make plans for their return to New York after Boston, the careful use of _we_ and _us_ and _future_ made all the more promising by their linked hands. 


End file.
